Ludlow Arts: Classical

Ludlow Piano Festival

Saturday 24 May 2025

6:00pm

St Laurence, Ludlow

Joanna MacGregor: piano

Philip Glass: Opening
Philip Glass: Knee Play, No.4 (from Einstein on the Beach) Philip Glass: Etude, No.6
Rameau: Le Rappel des Oiseaux
Couperin Les Fauvétes Plaintives
Rameau La Poule
Liszt: St Francis and the Birds
Liszt: Funérailles
Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition

The impossibly-stylish Joanna thrilled us here at our closing concert in 2023. She will no doubt do so again with a typically quixotic and eclectic programme including music by Glass, Rameau, Couperin, Liszt and the atmospheric Mussorgsky classic.

Described as ‘a brilliant light in the music world,’ Joanna MacGregor CBE is one of the world's most innovative musicians, appearing as a concert pianist, curator and conductor.

As a solo pianist she has appeared with leading orchestras, performing in over eighty countries; in 2025 she will tour Europe, Scandinavia, US, Canada and China. Joanna is Dame Myra Hess Chair of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music and runs two annual piano festivals for young musicians, as well as a year-round series at the Wigmore Hall; she has been Artistic Director of Dartington International Summer School, Bath International Festival, and Deloitte Ignite at the Royal Opera House, as well as a curator for festivals around the world.

In 2020 Joanna performed Beethoven's thirty-piano sonatas as part of Beethoven's 250th celebrations and gave an immersive series of Schubert's piano music in 2023. She has released over forty solo recordings and commissioned and premiered many landmark works.

A regular broadcaster on TV and radio, Joanna's collaborative and composition projects encompass jazz, film, visual art, contemporary dance and electronica, and she is overseeing music for forty-seven silent Sherlock Holmes films with the BFI. From 2015-2021 she chaired the Paul Hamlyn Composers Awards and has been a Booker Prize Judge. A regular conductor, she is Music Director of Brighton Philharmonic presenting bold, vibrant concerts in their centenary year.

Tickets £22 (u18 £5) from Ludlow Assembly Rooms box office HERE.